e square. At the appearance of the laughing
urchin who bestrode the cask, he resumed his dissertations with a
confidence that all are apt to feel who are about to treat on a subject
with which they have had occasion to be familiar.

"This is the god of good liquor," said Peterchen, always speaking to any
who would listen although, by an instinct of respect, he chiefly preferred
favoring the Signor Grimaldi with his remarks, "as may plainly be seen by
his seat; and these are dancing attendants to show that wine gladdens the
heart;--yonder is the press at work, extracting the juices, and that huge
cluster is to represent the grapes which the messengers of Joshua brought
back from Canaan when sent to spy out the land, a history which I make no
doubt you Signore, in Italy, have at your fingers' ends."

Gaetano Grimaldi looked embarrassed, for, although well skilled in the
lore of the heathen mythology, his learning as a male papist and a laic
was not particularly rich in the story of the Christian faith. At first he
supposed that the bailiff had merely blundered in his account of the
mythology, but, by taxing his memory a little, he recovered some faint
glimpses of the truth, a redemption of his character as a book-man for
which he was materially indebted to having seen some celebrated pictures
on this very subject, a species of instruction in holy writ that is
sufficiently common those who inhabit the Catholic countries of the other
hemisphere.

"Thou surely hast not overlooked the history of the gigantic cluster of
grapes, Signore" exclaimed Peterchen, astonished at the apparent
hesitation of the Italian. "'Tis the most beautiful of all the legends of
the holy book. Ha! as I live, there is the ass without his rider;--what
has become of the blackguard Antoine Giraud? The rogue has alighted to
swallow a fresh draught from some booth, after draining his own skin to
the bottom. This comes of neglect; a sober man, or at least one of a
harder head, should have been put to the part;--for, look you,'tis a
character that need stand at least a gallon, since the rehearsals alone
are enough to take a common drinker off his centre."

The tongue of the bailiff ran on in accompaniment, during the time that
the followers of Bacchus were going through with their songs and pageants,
and when they disappeared, it gained a louder key, like the "rolling river
that murmuring flows and flows for ever," rising again on the ear, after
the din